The Interstellar Starbase Syndicate is all about building stations in deep space. Building an Outpost was an obvious ambition. But without deep pockets or the military might of the territorial alliances, how could the ISS construct such a station? Herein lies a tale.

Plans and Preparation

Real planning started in late September, and the security plan started right at the beginning. ISS is a loose confederation of over 1000 pilots. Some are bound to be spies, and recent empires wars declared against ISS confirmed the espionage. So while ISS is chock full of haulers and miners, the risk of exposure meant we couldn't really take advantage of those strengths. Nevertheless, it was the rank-and-file ISS pilots who saved the day when the time came, and Marginis exists because of them.

The true plans were closely held by a small group, including ISS Chairman Count TaSessine and ISS Executor Serenity Steele. Simon Illian began scanning moons in Providence and Catch to scout likely locations. The area had unclaimed space, neighborly alliances and regular through traffic. Just the place to establish a trade hub, a veritable "Yulai of the south".

Construction security would rest on keeping those in the know to a tiny number of pilots, less than 6 until the very last days before launch. That still left the challenges of funding and defense.

As everyone knows now, capital for Marginis came from a successful IPO(Initial Public Offering). The construction plan called for 36 billion ISK so 3600 shares were sold for 10 million ISK each. The shares sold out by October 10th. Diplomatically, the IPO defends the station because a portion of the shares and offices were sold to the neighboring alliances. The neighbors liked the idea of a nearby trade hub and by buying in to it, put their diplomatic support behind the project.

The Big Secret

Construction began as soon as the money was in hand. The publicly announced launch date was December 1st. Intel suggested that many Eve pilots would be distracted October 20 to 22 by events at a far distant ice-planet called Reykjavik. In response, the timetable was adapted.

Now the true target for launch was 12:00 October 23rd, a mere two weeks after the IPO completed. The factory began constructing the Platform ('the egg') on October 15. To accelerate the schedule, the factory run for the Platform was outsourced to a builder who already had the requisite Outpost Construction skill. This proved fateful later on.

Unfortunately, SMITE Brotherhood was at war against ISS that first week of construction preparation. We couldn't have TooHot and his merry men disrupting the Outpost schedule, so to operate safely in empire during war, the freighter ISS Normandy moved to a non-ISS corp. The two ISS freighters pushed the total assets that would be flying through deep space systems up to the 40 billion ISK mark. The Rage and Terror [RAT.] corporation hassled the operation and shot down some pilots, but no one destroyed any materials sent to deep space. All of the station structures, fuels and construction goods were delivered safely.

While the factory job ran, the 3.5 million cubic meters (m3) of minerals and goods were bought and moved to the edge of empire space by Stins, the CEO of ISS Logistics. The first 10 days of construction prep could be managed by a small number of pilots. The next phase, moving everything from empire to deep space, would take real dedication.

Posted - 2005.10.26 23:15:00 -
[2]About this time a worrisome message came to Count TaSessine from a member of the Ascendant Frontier. ASCN built the first EVE Outpost, a Minmatar refinery station, and the message said their station had a Market. A major reason ISS chose to build a Gallente Administrative Outpost was that it had market access. That is, you may sell items located in that station and post buy orders local to the station. Turns out this was just confusion over the term 'market access'. Sure you can see the region market in space, in an Outpost, anywhere. But actually selling items located in an Outpost can only be done at the Gallente Outposts. Diplomatically, a Gallente outpost made sense as well since it was not as militarily useful as a refinery or factory station. Nevertheless, anxious moments happened as petitions were sent to the relevant authorities concerning the matter.

I never want to see trit in my hold again

This small ISS team staged all the cargo to a station in Litom(Curse region). The freighters Normandy and Burgundy carried everything from Berta in empire through the Doril gate into Curse. From Litom, it was just five hops to the starbase hanger arrays in KDH-GY. Moving 3.5 million m3 these last few hops had to be done with industrials and transport ships. The freighters could launch the starbase structures and the Outpost Platform but everything else had to come in the haulers.

The Count, Simon, Stins and Serenity personally did much of the hauling on Thursday and Friday. At this point the team simply had to have more manpower. On Friday 5 haulers joined in the convoy, but it was only 3 days to launch.

In this large an operation some detail or other is always missed. When setting up the starbases Thursday night (Oct 20), the Count discovered no laser crystals had been ordered. The 4 large starbases were nearly defenseless until the crystals arrived the next day. The team spent Thursday Friday and Saturday watching the mountain of 250 million tritanium in Litom dwindle ever so slowly as they hauled it all to the KDH-GY starbases.

On Saturday, the team grew again. Pilots from the ISS corporations Free Imperial Vikings and PAX were added to the ranks of the convoy, with Teal'cz scouting the way for us.

Saturday afternoon the convoy dropped the final load of construction material into the bank of Corporate Hanger Arrays at a starbase in KDH. The convoy headed back to Litom one last time to refit and log. The route had remained miraculously clear all day, but now Rage and Terror showed up to camp midway on the path back to Litom. Little did they know they had missed the entire haul. The empty convoy was pinned down at a safespot. We unabashedly logged right there and went to sleep. There was a big night ahead.

The Launch

The plan was to anchor the platform at 04:00 Sunday morning, fill it over the next few hours, and see the construction complete by 12:00. Thats not exactly how things turned out though.

The Outpost platform emerged from the factory Friday evening and moved to Litom. On Saturday, Count TaSessine loaded ISS Burgundy with the platform and parked in a starbase in KDH-GY until launch. After a long day of hauling Saturday, the Quafe fueled team showed up Sunday morning ready to watch the launch and then start shuttling construction materials from the starbase hangers to the egg.

The team had grown again but was still only about twenty people. All gathered at the fifth planet shortly after 04:00 to witness the launch. Count hit 'Launch Platform' and there appeared an enormous egg orbiting the planet. The window at the top of the egg showed a dazzling white spark within promising great things to come.

Posted - 2005.10.26 23:17:00 -
[3]Then the Count tried to anchor the platform and the grand plan promptly fell apart. Despite having level 5 Anchoring skill, he could not anchor the egg. Turns out, you also need Outpost Construction skill to successfully anchor an Outpost platform and only anchored platforms can be filled with construction goods.

Can I Panic Now?

Confusion reigned.

That early in the morning, it was forgotten the construction was contracted out. Frantic phone calls were attempted and the US based players had to sleep. Since the extra skill requirement was an 'undocumented feature' of platforms, the GMs were petitioned and they returned the egg to the Burgundy.

The platform becomes invulnerable when construction completes at 12:00. If we couldn't anchor it at 04:00, there was no way it would be ready Sunday. That meant protecting the egg 24 hours until 12:00 Monday instead of just 8 hours on Sunday. The period of vulnerability would occur right at the weekly peak of pilot activity. Nervous doesn't begin to describe the reaction to this risk. 40 billion ISK was in this system. The POSes (now with flavor crystals .. err, laser crystals) were defended but the egg itself would be exposed a very long time.

The glorious re-launch of the Outpost platform occurred just before 13:00 Sunday. Most of the team had come through a long night of petitions interspersed with naps. A pilot who had the platform construction skill arrived and anchored the egg. Turns out anchoring takes an hour. The team settled in to wait.

Ok, Can I Panic Now?!?

The guards didn't have long to settle down because the first uninvited guest appeared a mere minute after platform launch. To the chagrin of all, a pilot named Canary from Stain flew right up to the egg just a minute or two after launch. He left the system shortly after but the guards didn't have long to rest.

Fedor from RUS arrived in an Armageddon a few minutes later. He quickly discovered the egg and started shooting at the guards. The combat pilots drove him off, but took some damage themselves. Less than 10 minutes after launch and already combat was happening at the egg itself. Fedor kept appearing in the area the rest of the day, but no more shooting happened around the egg, except for one shot directly at the egg later towards the end.

Just before 14:00, I dropped the first load of tritanium into the egg. The platform password was quickly set and the haul team went to work. We had 162 IteronV loads to shuttle across the system. It took the haul team a little over 5 hours to do the job. The main impediment was jettison can bugs. Only the pilots in the corp owning the POS could directly take goods out the hanger arrays. Those pilots transfered goods to jettisoned canisters so the rest of us could load cargo. So many people trying to access jett cans simultaneously exposed a number of bugs. We worked around it by making fresh jett cans whenever the bugs cropped up.

Guests, invited and otherwise

After the initial combat by the egg, we felt very exposed and vulnerable. This was not the Plan afterall. The plan was to have had all this done in the early hours and have the Outpost built and invulnerable by now. Serenity Steele was doing double duty filling jett cans with cargo and looking for more military to come protect us. FinFleet came to the rescue around 15:00 for which everyone involved is very grateful. They camped the egg while the entire ISS alliance was informed and began to assemble in a blob in Assah.

Posted - 2005.10.26 23:19:00 -
[4]The secret known to maybe a dozen 24 hours earlier was now known to all. News of the location of the egg spread quickly. Arriving just ahead of the ISS blob, was Corporal Hicks and pals. A tense exchange went through local as these uninvited pilots flew to the egg. ISS only shoots after first blood, and did not preemptively shoot at the corporal's gang. Hicks expressed support for the project and some enthusiasm for fighting the guards, but left peacefully after viewing the egg. By 18:00, 30 ISS pilots were in system and more were in neighboring systems.

Transfers from the Hangers to the egg finished around 19:30. By now it seemed everyone in the EVE universe knew the existence and location of the platform. But we also had dozens of ISS pilots in system. As ever, a few last details had to be straightened out. Somehow no robotics had been put into the egg. How could 14k robotics go missing? Well in the 36 corporate hangers, that were being emptied by several people into jett cans, the robotics got mixed in with the POS fuel goods. Also missing were 1000 Quafe's and 51 construction blocks. My guess is the blocks disappeared due to jett can bugs, but who knows. An ISS pilot in empire brought some out to Litom. The Quafe was just left off the master spreadsheet. Also a last load of tritanium was in Litom.

The Final Battle

The final battle occurred while trying to convoy these remaining goods from Litom to KDF. fedor, who had been shooting guards 6 hours earlier, was in Litom still in his Armageddon. 4 haulers with a ring of escorts got to the Litom station OK to pick up the blocks, Quafe and trit. fedor and a pal from RAT shot down several escorting ships before retreating as a second gang of escorts arrived.

All we needed to do was survive this haul to finish filling the platform. The critical items were all in Stins' Occator at the center of the convoy. Hostiles were in two systems on the return trip. Captain TrootSky led the way with the escorts while Stins used every safespot he had. After some combat in XZIC next door to KDH, the Captain cleared Stins to fly through to KDH and get to the egg. At last the egg was complete.

I'm not gonna shoot it, you shoot it

The question left was: is the egg safe? Some information suggested a filled egg was invulnerable. We certainly told the visitors that filled eggs were invulnerable. The only way to know for sure, though, was to take a shot at it. There were no volunteers to shoot the egg, so Count TaSessine targeted the platform and hit F1. For 92 damage! The egg was vulnerable after all.

It was 22:00. That left a 13 hour window of exposure until the build completed. A late night crew of ISS Navy and volunteers patrolled the system those 13 hours keeping the 40 billion ISK project safe. Most of these pilots had only learned of the outpost's existence earlier that day, and now volunteered to spend the night guarding it.

I returned to KDF-GY at 10:50 Monday to find SuperScarface's team had kept the egg safe all night long. The garrison had held and never had less than 14 pilots in system those wee hours of the morning.

Docking Request Accepted

On Monday October 24, at 11:30, the new Gallente Administrative Outpost appeared (oddly about 40km from the egg's location). It has a prominent, long office tower rising from the base of the station. Lots of offices for those 100 janitors to keep tidy. By 11:45 about 20 pilots were docked in the brand new outpost.

Fredrick Lyrus of Lyrus Associates docked first and Count TaSessine put up some ammo for sale to inaugurate the market.

So how do you build an Outpost without deep pockets or military might? With the help of pilots from all over Eve who scanned, hauled, garrisoned, escorted, bought shares, and fought and died. ISS Marginis is now open for all. Please visit (small docking charge will apply).

Posted - 2005.10.27 11:23:00 -
[20]Edited by: hyundra04 on 27/10/2005 11:25:30Yes we were very impressed by what we saw. we were lead by corpral hicks and mindles. the gang we had were very pleased to find an outpost in construction and to begin the feeling was that we would take it out. but after a chat and a realisation of how this would or could benefit us in future ( and midles/hicks orders) we decided just to take a look. what a great sight it is. we did pop a ship but hicks refunded the guy for his loss. go take a look guys it is awsome.

D'oh! By my count I have it as KDF twice and KDH 6 times. Someone call my editor.

I should also like to note that this multiweek long adventure, enjoyed by many many players, was possible because of the excellent game design and implementation from CCP. This is the best entertainment dollar I spend.

Posted - 2005.10.27 14:48:00 -
[26]
Great story, well done and congrats getting your outpost completed. I've been watching with interest since you started discussing the IPO. It's stuff like this that makes me want to still be playing this game in a years time. You MUST submit this as a news item, perhaps shortened.

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